20 Instant Upgrades to Make Chrome Better than Firefox

Get Going with Greasemonkey

Move over Mozilla, your Firefox browser isn't the only one to support Greasemonkey anymore. As of February 1, 2010, so does Google Chrome. This is such a huge development, that we might someday look back and rank this as one of the most critical moments in Chrome's history.

To give you a little background information, Greasemonkey started off as a Firefox extension. More than just another add-on, however, Greasemonkey makes it possible for users to install scripts and integrate on-the-fly Javascript changes to websites. Put more plainly, Greasemonkey gives users access to a ton of additional extensions, over 40,000 of which can be found on userscripts.org. Not all of them work correctly, but a good many do, and that number will only increase with time.

There's no plug-in to install here, Greasemonkey works natively with the latest version of Chrome. Just click the above link and start experimenting. Here are a couple to get you started.

Facebook Purity

Hey, we love racking up trillions of dollars and wiping out our enemies in Mafia Wars just as much as the next virtual mafioso, but we could care less about your mafia. We also wouldn't be sad if an asteroid landied on your farm and decimated your crops, and while it might sound callous, we also have no interest in how you fared in whatever quiz you decided to participate in.

We're not haters in general, we just hate the crap that floods Facebook. Luckily for us, we're not the only ones, and someone had the good sense to make Facebook Purity. This script does what your so-called friends should be doing - it removes all the quiz and application messages, letting you enjoy Facebook the way it was designed to be enjoyed before the whole MySpace crowd migrated over.

Attention Ebay shoppers, you need to install this script. Ebay has made more than a few changes to its Feedback system over the years, but one thing the online auction hasn't done is make it easy to see a user's negative or neutral remarks. The only way to do that is to scroll through someone's entire feedback profile, and when dealing with a PowerSeller, that can be pretty time consuming. It's also necessary, because do you really want to take a chance on a seller who has a history of selling counterfeit goods?

Ebay Hacks adds a pair of tabs to Feedback profiles allowing you to quickly sort through all "Complaints Received" and "Complaints Left."

Get NoScript-Like Behavior in Chrome (and a Word about AdBlock)

It probably seems silly to talk about NoScript without mentioning AdBlock, so we we'll the give popular ad blocking service a shout out. And while we're at it, let us clear the air. In general, we don't condone running AdBlock, and with good reason. If all of our readers blocked the ads on our site, we wouldn't be able to exist, plain and simple. We also realize that there are some sites that make malicious use of ads, bombarding you with popups at every turn. That's also bunk. So our stance is this: If you must, go ahead and install AdBlock (it's now available for Chrome right here), but disable it for sites you trust and support, which we hope includes MaximumPC.com. You can do so by installing the Browser Button for AdBlock extension (available here), and then clicking on the icon and selecting 'Don't run on this domain.'

All rright, now that we've stepped down from our soapbox, let us turn our attention to NoScript. NoScript is somewhat of a different beast as it provides an extra layer of protection against potentially malicious (or just annoying) JavaScript code. It's become a favorite among Firefox users, but isn't available on Chrome.

That's the bad news. The good news is you can still get NoScript-like behavior in Chrome, though you'll have to run the developer build (currently 5.0.xxx.x). It also isn't as slick, but it works. After you've installed the developer build (download it here) and restarted your browser, go to Tools>Options and load up the 'Under the Hood' tab. Right under Privacy, click the Content settings... button.

Head over to the JavaScript tab and click the 'Do not allow any site to run JavaScript' radio button. This will block all JavaScript from executing, but if there are certain sites you want to allow, mash the Exceptions... button and manually enter them in. Alternately, you can allow JavaScript to run and set up a blacklist but typing in sites and selecting 'Disable' from the pull-down menu.

While you're in there, you can also control images, plug-ins, pop-ups, and cookies by diving into each one's tab and adjusting the settings.

Compare Sites with Split Page View

Tabbed browsing is the greatest thing since, well, tabbed browsing, but if you want to view two websites at the same time, you need to open another window. Or you can rapid-fire switch between tabs. Neither of these is ideal.

We don't know why split-screen browsing hasn't yet been adopted by every major browser maker, especially with widescreen monitors now commonplace. But while browser makers drag their feet, you can take matters into your own hands by bookmarking http://www.podobne.pl/splitscreen/. This URL splits your browser in half with separate URL bars. It's not a perfect solution -- some sites, like Newegg, hijack the entire screen -- but until browser makers get on the ball, it's the best we've got.

Stuff Chrome in Your Pocket

Door number 3 is the only one that will fit in your pocket, at least without looking silly. It doesn't take much room on your USB key either, consuming about 35MB.

Just click the link above to download and 'install' the app. This really just unpacks the files, and you can choose to do this to your desktop and then move the folder over to your USB key, or unpack directly to your thumb drive. Once you're finished, just fire up Chrome Portable and start browsing!

"Another handy feature in Chrome, and that one that isn't duplicated in Firefox (not out of the box, anyway) [..]"

Just btw., this has been made a feature of Firefox: Paste & Go

=)

PS. Another comment below mentioned reliability, to be able to select Firefox crash recovery set the option browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes to "0" from the about:config page (this, however, messes with the Firefox App Tabs feature :))

Before, I always use firefox. But since I noticed that it really takes time to load the data and some website information, I downloaded the Chrome and really found new features. And besides, I agree it was really faster than firefox.

In market, there is no other browser that can compete with Firefox. Though few upgrades has been released to make Google Chrome more efficient and effective, but I believe that 80% people on Internet must be using the Firefox browser. As it has thousands of add-ons to add to the browser which is the plus point of Firefox, whereas Google chrome doesn't have much effective add-ons as Firefox have it.

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I know I'm a bit late to this party, but I just thought I'd toss a comment in about Adblock. There are two very legitimate uses for Adblock, booth of which I have experienced:

Dialup connections. I live in the boonies where high speed internet is not available. I suffered the internet at about 44kbps for about four years, and when you're surfing at that speed every byte hurts. Adblock helps by eliminating unneccesary data (I actually used it to block website header images in addition to advertising). Flashblock and Noscript also made the suffering a bit more endurable.

Pay-per-use data. I could not stand dialup another second, and since I live in a 3G covberage area I got an internet stick (which is why I am late to this party: The "features" section was too painful via dialup). It works great (my speeds average 5MBPS) but it is pay per use. My basic plan is $35/month for up to 500MB, and it goes up in steps by 500MB blocks of data to a peak of $90 for 5GB (plus a nickel for each additional MB after 5GB). Obviously bittorrent is out of my reach right now, but so is wasting valuable bandwidth on advertsing. I need every available kilobyte to be reserved for actual content.

1). NoScript. I will not use it without a NoScript extension. AdBlock is great, but not a replacement for NoScript. Yes, I read about the developer build disabling all javascript, but typing in every website manually to whitelist? That is pretty cumbersome. Not to mention NoScript actually blocks a lot more than just javascript.

2). They NEED a Master Password desparately. I'm not saving a single password in Chrome if anybody can just open up Chrome and view them as plain text in the options. I would think this would be extremely easy to implement, but has been a failing of Chrome since its inception.

Chrome works a lot faster than FF for me, but these are 2 must have additions for me, and are deal breakers.

3. Change the information in the brackets and possibly the drive letter if Chrome is elsewhere. (The "Start in" location won't need to be changed, and should match the directories leading to chrome.exe above if you're lost.)

4. Chrome will create a new clean directory with the essential files using the name you provided in [PROFILE NAME], and you will have a fresh start: you may drag any bookmarks you need from the Chrome opened with the former shortcut to the Chrome opened with the new shortcut.

I love the speed of the browser and some of the features but they pushed 4.x out way to fast and there are a lot of issues with showing sites. Chrome even has issues showing their own GWT based web applications in a consistant manner when run through an Apache server, it's not like Apache isn't a known Web Server. Looks like I'll stick with 3.x for a while or FF (which is dependable, even if it's slow)

I just don't like the look of Chrome. Its too, stuck up looking. Like a Mac almost. That, and it loads just as fast as Firefox does for me. I'm happy. Been using FF since 0.8, and I've had no issues. And as for the RAM leak issues, man... thats harsh. Over a gig! :O

That's the beauty of Chrome: there aren't a bunch of toolbars cluttering up the top half of your screen, and everything you need is still there. I suggest customizing your bookmarks instead of downloading extra toolbars. (Ctrl+B will toggle the Bookmarks Bar for you.)

I've been using Chrome since shortly after launch, and recently upgraded Firefox to do some work related stuff. I just can't stand it. It's bizarre because I used FF for years and years, but I just can't deal with its quirks anymore. Tabs load in slow motion and grind the whole browser to a halt. It generally uses about the same amount of memory as Chrome, but Chrome just flies. And I caught Firefox chugging down over a gig of memory not once but TWICE in the past week. I really thought they would have fixed those memory leaks.

Chrome still lacks one important feature added in Firefox 3: tags for bookmarks

When you have a bunch of bookmarks or can't remeber the url / title you had for the bookmark, tags are a Godsend.

Having multiple tabs on firefox is just as easy as chromes. You just have to seperate use tab with a | (not an i) .

Firefox also is much easier at adding a keyword search. You just have to right click a search box on the website you want to make a keword for and select add a keyword for this search. Then it has a normal bookmark information along with a keyword you want to set for it.

I want to switch to Chrome, but the one thing that keeps me from doing so is the one thing that I thought would be a no-brainer for the development team when I first heard of Google Chrome.... Google Bookmarks.

Sure, you can sync Chrome bookmarks with another Chrome browser, but I want my Google Bookmarks built into Chrome so that I can easily access my bookmarks from any brower, not just Chrome. I've been doing this for years with Google Toolbar on IE and Firefox, and on both PC and Mac platforms.

I would jump ship to Chrome and also recommend it to my family and friends once they implement that. But if I can't access my bookmarks from any computer that may or may not have Chrome installed then it's just not going to happen anytime soon.

One addon I wish they mentioned more was the Xmarks addon for bookmark syncing. That way you can sync between browsers and computers. So handy. Also running AdBlock, Forecastfox Weather, IE Tab, One Number and Speed Dial.

Chrome is a fine browser, but i still can't stand the way that it and Safari handle bookmarks. I don't really want to have to use the address bar to search for my bookmark; I want a bookmark bar on the side so i can scroll through them. I bookmark too many pages inside sites to make the search feature work for me. Of course, I'm so used to Opera and its quirks I can't imagine dumping it; but Chrome has no chance with the way it handles bookmarks.